Mia nodded, eyes shadowing as she sat forward to pick up her glass. ‘Do you miss Greece when you are away from it?’
‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I fly in and out of Athens too often to miss it.’
‘Family, then,’ she probed.
‘None.’ The way he carefully veiled his eyes made Mia frown because she was almost certain she’d just hit a raw nerve. ‘Tell me why you left it so long to contact Oscar.’ As neatly as that he turned the conversation away from him and back on to her.
‘Because I only discovered I had a father this year—on my twenty-first birthday to be exact…’
She went on to explain about discovering Oscar, in between savouring forkfuls of food. She didn’t notice that Nikos barely touched the food on his plate, or that he rarely removed his dark eyes from her face. She was not aware that he kept filling up her wine glass or that her tongue was loosening the more that she drank. By the time their dessert arrived she was feeling so mellow she even reached across the table to spoon up a sample of his untouched dessert and teased him with her laughing eyes as she placed the stolen morsel in her mouth.
‘I have a sweet tooth.’
‘Among other things,’ he murmured oddly.
About to ask him what he meant by that—
‘Do you want coffee?’ he got in before her.
‘And spoil the taste of the wine? Grazie, no,’ she refused.
‘Then if you’ve finished do you mind if we leave now?’
‘Oh…’ Mia tensed, her slender spine arching up on the sudden realisation that she’d talked his socks off all the way through the meal! It was no wonder he was wearing that blank expression on his face. ‘I had lost track of how long we have been here…’
‘And the restaurant has emptied,’ Nikos pointed out dryly. ‘We’re the last ones here…’
Flickering a surprised glance around the empty tables she noticed the restaurant staff standing around, trying hard not to look impatient for them to leave. ‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ she whispered from the depths of a sinking embarrassment.
‘You were enjoying your meal. There was no need to rush.’ With the merest glance in the waiter’s direction he brought him rushing to his side. ‘My companion’s jacket,’ he instructed, handing over a credit card. ‘You have time to finish your wine,’ he indicated smoothly to Mia, as if she would dare to take another sip!
‘No.’ She stood. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ A flush of hot colour was burning her cheeks.
She wanted to die where she stood—deflate like a balloon and disappear altogether. She almost snatched her jacket from the waiter when he arrived with it, so eager to remove herself from here now that she could barely stop herself from doing it at a run.
The waiter was handing Nikos his credit card. Mia fumbled in her urgency to drag her jacket on and missed slotting her arm in the sleeve.
‘Allow me…’
She froze as Nikos took the garment from her and politely held it open, ready for her to slip it on. Her hair became trapped inside the black satin and she used the need to release it as an excuse to keep her head lowered so no one could see how hot her face had gone.
Outside the cool night air hit her like an icy slap in the face and she shivered. Nikos placed a hand against her lower back to walk her towards his waiting car. A beep sounded as the locks sprang free and his hand guided her into her seat.
The car growled into life. It moved away from the curb with the sleek prowling grace of a hunting panther. As her gaze was drawn downwards to watch as his long fingers moved the car through its gears, she saw something that caught her breath in her throat.
‘What—?’ Nikos asked, so sharp he obviously did not miss anything.
‘Nothing.’ Dragging her eyes away from the black-and-gold insignia she’d spied on the dash, she tried to pretend that she had not seen it. Then, without any warning at all, she choked, ‘I feel sick.’
The stunned silence which followed her announcement held for a second or two, then the car ground to a jerking halt. Nikos was out of it and striding round to yank her door open before Mia could do it for herself. Out in the night air again, she began to shiver so badly he must have felt compelled to offer a supporting arm around her shaking shoulders while she stood fighting a battle with nausea that had nothing to do with the amount of wine she had drunk.
Nikos did not know that though. He was cursing himself. He wished the hell he knew what he had been playing at back there, feeding her wine by the glassful to draw her out of her shell. What had he hoped to gain from it? An insight into what made his PA tick, or had his motives been fixed somewhere else?
‘It’s usually better to throw up and get it over with than to fight it,’ he advised, trying to recall the last time he’d deliberately set out to get a woman drunk.
There had never been another time. He had never sunk this low before. She got to him and he didn’t like it. She made him think, do and want things he did not want to think, do or want.
‘I’m all r-right.’ Making an effort to pull herself together, Mia stepped away from his supporting arm to stand by herself.